Hiding

In a TW support chat tonight someone said something about hunger that totally hit home. She said, “Hunger brings me to a transparent place before the Lord.”

I have been giving myself free rein with my food this week. I have not told myself “no” more than once or twice, and only just because I was in physical pain from what I had already eaten.

Why?

What am I hiding? What is it that I think I can hide? And exactly who am I hiding it from? God? Or myself? If I don’t get down to what is really bothering me, will it not bother me?

It started shortly after I found out a relatively new friend got some life-altering news. It rocked my world in a way that was unexpected. I don’t think I’ve found my balance since then. It’s like nothing made sense anymore. Nothing seemed normal. Things changed in small ways that made everything seem unfamiliar…even hostile.

So, as a default, I returned headfirst into eating. I stopped my morning study of TW. I haven’t read the Bible at all. I haven’t read any of the Divine Hours prayers. Nothing. I have, however plunged head-first into service. Helping out wherever I can – making myself useful. It seems my path to feeling better about myself is paved with being useful and pleasing people. And yet I still eat.

Tonight I have just about come to the end of all my energy. My internal momentum is grinding to a halt. In TW terms, I’m living the pendulum life (between license and legalism), and can see I’m about to head full into the legalism stage…unless I make some deliberate changes. Unless I stop the default path of my life and just get quiet. I haven’t been listening for the past several days. I am so afraid to get quiet. I am afraid of what I might hear. I am afraid of truth.

We (J4 and I) are looking at making some pretty hefty decisions, and I am terrified, absolutely in a panic over our considered changes. I don’t want to make the changes, but then I do, but then I don’t. I feel like I cannot rest until it’s resolved, but it will do nothing but harm to rush through the decisions we’re making.

I need to get quiet, and get honest with God, and then just listen. I don’t know if I have the patience for that.

Lord, give me the strength to be weak, and the confidence to put myself at your mercy, and the stillness to speak the truth to you.